


Blow a Kiss at the Methane Skies

by nanonihilist



Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Asra is a bitch, Blood, First Kiss, Julian is smitten, Love Bites, M/M, Nosebleed, Red Plague (The Arcana), Unrequited Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-12
Updated: 2020-03-12
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:14:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23114527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nanonihilist/pseuds/nanonihilist
Summary: “Will you pull away again?”“Even if I do, pull me back in please?”
Relationships: Asra/Julian Devorak
Comments: 2
Kudos: 44





	Blow a Kiss at the Methane Skies

**Author's Note:**

> i love a pining idiot julian and i love a bitchy asra and i love making them make out <3  
> major thanks to virus for cheering me on !! ^o^

A surprisingly cool breeze danced its way through the sheer curtains chosen with taste for the intricately carved windows of the palace library. The dust set free from the pages of decades old books the white haired man was going through glimmered like glitter in the warm rays of the sun. The room was  as quiet as the slow creep of time , save for the occasional flipping of pages and the spidery scribbling of the auburn haired doctor, who had been sitting and scribbling in the same manner for hours and hours. Hints of sunlight flowed over his face, casting mischievous shadows over his cheekbones and making his hollow cheeks look even darker, a testament to the inhuman exhaustion he's been putting himself through for the last god knows how many months. The light in his hair made his glorious locks give off a coppery glow, and he must have been looking seraphic in the twisted way Asra liked, for the latter, albeit preoccupied, couldn't stop his eyes from running from the heavy leather bound book in his lap to his companion's face covered in a thin sheath of sweat, betraying his restiveness. His restless eyes had wandered off many times and had still found him looming over a plethora of books and sketches, some of which he occasionally crumpled up into a ball and chucked across the room in frustration. Sometimes their eyes met, but Julian broke the eye-contact in a pretence of wiping the sweat off his temples, as if he were perpetually afraid of being distracted by those purple irises, veiled by long white eyelashes. Maybe he was right to do so, for Asra already found himself quite perturbed by catching a few glimpses of Julian's grey ones. 

The cup of coffee that Julian himself had asked one of the palace staffs to bring, lay untouched, save for one sip, and had gone awfully cold by now. The white haired felt a driving urge to place his own lips over the rim of the cup, where the redhead had placed his, before he shook the thought out of his head. 

A string of reprimanding thoughts raced through his mind before being interrupted with a hiss that sounded from the other side of the table and a crumpled ball of paper went flying across the library. Asra's eyes fell on the paraphernalia laid out on the table, a fresh page stained with a fat drop of crimson. His eyes met the other's pallid face again, red trailing down from one of his nostrils, over his thin chapped lips. 

"Julian, your nose is bleeding!"

"Damn, Asra. Thanks for the diagnosis, you're quite a doctor yourself, aren't you?" The redhead joked, raising one of his eyebrows in sarcastic appreciation as he brought a slender finger up to inspect the thick wetness above his cupid's bow, causing the magician to roll his eyes.

"You've overworked yourself enough" Asra said with an exasperated sigh, doubting he'll be able to convince the doctor, "get some rest now."

"It's just an exceptionally hot day. I'll be fine." Closing his eyes, Julian tipped his head back, leaning against the wall and exposing the column of his throat as he hissed lightly. His neck felt sore, back stiff, legs numb and each movement brought in a new discomfort laced with relief. He knew his body was protesting but there was little he could do about it. Neither of them had found anything that could be called a breakthrough, but the clock never stopped ticking. There was still so much to be done, but not nearly enough time. The cacophonous gong of the massive timepiece ominously hanging on the wall opposite to him was a reminder of how no matter however hard he tried, the hours would slip past him, one by one, till the ruination that had been hovering over for so long would finally descend down on them. Respite was a luxury to him. 

“You’re exceptionally exhausted on an exceptionally hot day, Ilya. There’s no way you’re gonna be fine working yourself down to the bone like this.” Asra tried to reason but the redhead only smiled.

Blood flowed freely. Watching Julian take little to no action to stop the bleeding, Asra reached out instinctively, holding the former by the chin and dragged him closer to himself to make him lean forward. 

The doctor’s eyes flew open, the steadily spreading rosiness in his cheeks betraying how flustered the action made him. 

“I can handle a nosebleed,  _ oh virtuoso magician _ ” Julian tried to muster his best I’m-all-right-Jack smile.

“I like to be of  _ help _ sometimes,  _ dearest doctor _ ” Asra threw him a supercilious smile and dragged his face closer by the chin. 

With a gentle sylphlike finger, the white haired traced the sharp bridge of Julian’s nose, passing over the ghost of a scar that he got from the last time he had dragged Asra into a bar to blow off some steam but had gotten into a fist fight instead. They had gotten roaring drunk that night and at one point their lips had ended up only a hair’s breadth apart, breaths entwined and they had almost kissed,  _ almost,  _ before the good doctor chickened out and Asra had never been so furious. Not that he’d ever tell a soul about how much he’d loved to have Julian’s whiskey coated lips all over his. 

Shaking the piece of memory off his mind with a sigh, Asra asked the redhead to blow out gently from his nose before he pinched his nose  just below the harder cartilage, with the thumb and index finger.

“You  _ need _ to let people help you once in a while, Ilya.”

Julian kept his hands awkwardly splayed out on top of the low table, as he briefly looked at the mage’s face before turning his head away from the grip. “Let me be. I don't wanna be a bother.” The trail of blood that had started drying came alive again and Julian’s tongue softly darted out to lick the blood off his upper lip.

Asra’s brows pinched together in light annoyance and this time he cupped the doctors face before holding his nose again. 

_ You’re not a bother.  _ Asra wanted to say, but the words disappeared into the chasm that had opened up sometime ago in his heart, a crack that no amount of earth could ever fill. 

He let go of the nose and thumbed over the layer of crimson moisture on Julian’s lips. The latter’s heart skipped a set of beats and the poor doctor could hardly breathe. The hand on his cheeks gently creeped into his thick auburn locks and the mage sent all the stationary from the table tumbling down to the floor, spilling cerulean ink all over.

“What a mess--”

“You are, I know.” Asra climbed onto the wood, pushing the other man flush against the wall. Patting down his disheveled thatch of red, Asra leaned down into his furiously blushing face. Julian’s heart hammered in his chest like the hooves of a horse gone mad, his hands practically itching to twist in Asra’s shirt and pull him down onto him, feel his warmth and nothing else, but his body went as limp as his mind frantic, like a puppet with no strings to be pulled but with an urge to run. Their lips were only a hair’s breadth apart again, so close yet there was precariousness on the redhead’s features.

“Will you pull away  _ again _ ?”

The magician’s uncertain yet assertive voice pulled Julian out of the trance the former’s bold and quick actions had plunged him into. He could only manage a confused “Huh?”

Asra huffed out a weak laugh and brought his lips closer to the doctor’s ear, “I said, will you pull away again? Like last time?” 

Julian could only stare up at the man looking down on him as he thought of all those times they could’ve lost themselves in each other’s arms but didn’t because he was unsure of his worth. Nevertheless, he longed for it. He’d longed for it since forever.

The silence was stifling for the redhead, but even more so for Asra. There were clouds blocking the sun now, the breeze gradually cooling down as the heat was no longer torturous. But the air in the library remained oppressive and Julian’s nose stayed bleeding.

Resigning himself to the rejection Julian’s silence seemed to be, Asra’s fingers slowly began retreating from the latter’s hair only to be stopped by an unsure palm. 

“Even if I do, pull me back in please?” The doctor’s lips stretched up into a smirk as he reached for the other’s lips. The contact was soft at first, two pairs of lips pressing against each other, the blood on Julian’s lips rubbing off on Asra’s as both of them smiled in warped satisfaction. There was a feeling in this touch. Not love, not affection, maybe on Julian’s side, but certainly not on Asra’s. Maybe Asra was feeling the kind of joy one feels when a burnt wick is replaced by a new one and the flame burns with a new zeal. He pulled back for a moment, searching for a word to describe the warmth in the pit of his belly, but the sight of the doctor’s face, eager and craving, stained with blood and a hint of lust, he figured his thinking could wait. 

This time when Asra dived in, he went for Julian’s jaw instead of his lips. Before the redhead could make a move, Asra tightened his fist in his hair and pulled back, dragging an open mouthed kiss across his bony and slightly unshaven jawline. The sensation was electric, sending jolts of anticipation and rapture down Julian’s spine. He closed his fluttering eyes and surrendered the rest of his jaw and neck by obediently throwing his head back. The magician travelled down the column of his neck, leaving butterfly kisses all the way down to his clavicles, sinking his teeth into the unblemished skin. For a hot second, it wasn’t Julian writhing under him. It was  _ someone _ else, someone much more  _ familiar _ , someone _ sweeter _ and someone  _ certainly not Ilya _ . But the wanton moan slipping past the doctor’s lips snapped Asra’s illusion in half. It ired the latter. Irritated, the magician pulled the skin between his teeth and bit hard, hard enough to draw blood and Julian whimpered louder. Asra worked deftly on his neck, leaving aching marks in all shades of red and purple. 

Julian had finally found strength in his hands and used them to cup the white haired man’s face and brought him up to his lips again. What followed was a display of the promise of realness, of the  _ primal desire _ that lives in us all. Lips parted and gave way to tongues as teeth bit down on whatever soft skin they could find. Asra’s hands found their way into Julian’s shirt, touching and feeling every bit of him. From his pecs to the impression of prominent ribs through thin skin, no piece of his dermis left untouched while his mouth was explored by a smart tongue. 

Asra climbed down into the doctor’s lap, carefully placing his knee over the other’s groin, all the while biting down on his bloody bottom lip. Julian gripped the magician’s waist tighter, a tantalizing sob tearing its way through his throat. They couldn’t come closer even if they tried to, but the yearning in Julian’s veins had him pushing up against Asra till not even an atom could fit in between them. 

The mage pulled back to catch his breath, making a  _ very _ provocative sight of licking Julian’s blood clean from his own lips. The latter reached forward to catch his lips again but was stopped with a firm hand against his bare chest. Asra’s eyes were focused on the entrance of the library, his hand reaching up to pat Julian on the head. 

“Let’s get back to work, Ilya.” Flashing him a wicked grin, Asra pointed towards the tent in the doctor’s slacks, “I’ll let you take care of  _ that _ yourself.” With that, the white haired man hurriedly climbed off the other’s lap, settled back into his place across the table and picked up a book at random. 

A moment or two later, the sick count’s infuriatingly loud voice flowed in. 

“Found anything yet?” Lucio barked and Julian couldn’t help but roll his eyes. As much as the interruption infuriated him, he certainly wouldn’t want to be caught making out in the palace library by the count himself. 

“Unfortunately, no. As you can see,” the doctor pointed to the dry trail of red under his nose, “I’m not doing exactly well myself. So, I’m going to retire to my quarters for now and resume the work in the evening.” 

Before the count could come up with a response, Julian slung his jacket over his shoulder and stormed out of the room. In this state, his mind was occupied by many things, but work was not one of those. The urgency for work was thoroughly kissed out of him by the magician, and patience doesn’t come so easily when there’s an harrowing ache in your core.

The sky was pretty much dark now, the sun gone and the clouds ruling the vast expanse. The torridity had disappeared and everything was at rest, save for a certain doctor.

**Author's Note:**

> leave kudos and feedbacks please :^) they're the only things that gets the writer in me going <3


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